LACMA Faces a Blue Period : Art: Director Michael Shapiro says that despite cutbacks, ‘the museum’s exhibition program will continue at the same high level.’

Twenty-three employees gone--some of them laid off, others transferred or prematurely retired. Galleries closed on a rotating basis. Maintenance reduced. Utilities budgets diminished. With $2 million in budget cuts mandated by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors last September, this has not been a great season for the County Museum of Art.

Morale hit bottom on Friday as the deadline for the county’s early retirement program forced painful decisions. But as the museum licks its wounds, LACMA director Michael Shapiro is taking solace in the company of equally miserable museums all across the country, and chief curator of American art Michael Quick--who resigned after 16 1/2 years of service--is looking forward to full-time scholarship.

“This process has recurred across the nation in different ways. It seems to be a fact of the cultural landscape in the 1990s,” Shapiro said. “Like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York . . . and like other great museums, we have had to make adjustments on a selective basis and rotate closures of our permanent collections galleries . . . We are consistent with national developments.”

Indeed, the Met initiated rotating gallery closures in September, 1991. Faced with a loss of revenue from New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs, the venerable Brooklyn Museum shut down for a week in 1991 and permanently closed an extra day each week. The Detroit Institute of the Arts, perhaps the hardest hit of major urban art museums, has reduced its staff by half, closed an additional day each week and shut many of its galleries.

At LACMA, where visitors already encounter some closed galleries on weekdays, several upcoming traveling exhibitions have been scratched from the schedule, such as a retrospective of the work of R.B. Kitaj, and “Max Weber: The Cubist Decade, 1910-1920.” But Shapiro contends that changes won’t be noticed by most visitors. “The museum’s exhibition program will continue at the same high level as it always has. Our ability to manage the county cutbacks through a wide range of means is unlikely to change our profile with the public,” he said.

Shapiro, former chief curator of the St. Louis Museum, who took over the beleaguered museum in October, has chosen to view some of LACMA’s problems as opportunities.

“Clearly in the future the ‘90s will be characterized as a period of greater austerity than the previous decade,” he said. “However, the limitation of resources is likely to push us to be increasingly creative as we look at our exhibition schedule and public programming.”

The solutions he has in mind are likely to call for greater use of the museum’s permanent collection and fewer expensive imports. But in the director’s words, this amounts to nothing more ominous than “a different mix between the permanent collection and traveling loan exhibitions” or “a reformulation of what we’ve always done.”

As to morale problems, “We have tried to be very open and share information in as open a way as possible with the staff in a family-like atmosphere,” Shapiro said. “Coming through all this together has bound us together in a special way.”

Last week, the museum “closed a chapter” on a difficult period, Shapiro said. But the county’s fiscal outlook suggests that the future may be no easier. “I can’t look into a crystal ball,” he said, “but we will be better prepared to implement changes that may be required in the future.”

For the moment, the director is looking ahead to a few pleasant challenges. Unlikely as it may sound in the wake of staff reductions, the museum has three openings. Top priorities are replacements for Julie Johnston, director of development, who resigned in December, and William Lillys, head of the education department, who retired at the end of the year. A bit lower on the agenda is a curator of Latin American art, a new position in what Shapiro calls “an emerging field.”

Quick, 45, who has been the museum’s chief curator of American art since 1976, also is looking ahead--but to a career move. He plans to leave his position on May 7 to write a catalogue raisonne of George Inness’ paintings.

“This work--a complete record of Inness’ paintings--is the kind of project that scholars do in maturity,” Quick said. “Every scholar wants to do a great work for which he will be remembered. This will be mine. As time goes on, Inness’ paintings will be referred to by their Quick numbers,” he said, alluding to the catalogue’s entry numbers.

Quick said he decided to resign on Jan. 11, while attending a meeting informing the staff of impending layoffs. “I have been working part time on the Inness project for several years. I have had a job and a half,” Quick said, noting that the catalogue is funded by the New York-based Martucci Foundation. “As I was sitting there in the audience, I thought this was a logical move for me, to interrupt my curatorial career and complete this great work.

“I also thought that my resignation might save a job for someone else, maybe even a curator, but it doesn’t matter who. They are all people, and as we often hear, some of them may be one mortgage payment away from being on the street,” he said.

Shapiro accepted Quick’s resignation on Friday afternoon. His successor has not been named.

Quick, who will continue as head of the department of American art until his May departure, plans to remain in Los Angeles for two or three years while completing the Inness project. Then he probably will look for another museum position.

“After such a long time, I identify so completely with my position here that I feel as if I am amputating an arm,” he said. “But I built the department. It will always bear my imprint . . . If you walk through the Early American art galleries, you will see how many of the works have acquisition dates after 1976; it’s probably nine out of 10.”